(As told to me by my good friend)
Jonas Biliunas
Today the farmstead of my birth stands on a hill in the barren, sandy, windswept lands not far from the Sventoji River. Forests can be found only far to the north of the land, and only tiny pine saplings dot the east and the west. As I recall, not that long ago the entire farmstead was buried in deep, rich forest. Beyond these forests and stretching amongst scattered quagmires to the very banks of the Sventoji were the splendid pastures, shaded by oak trees, belonging to the people. The fields are no less splendid today, but the forests that once girdled them are long gone. They disappeared like the fairy tales we forget as we grow up, but which continue to inhabit our memory like distant, seductive images.
Those beautiful forests were the property of ‘our lord’.
Don’t laugh at me for saying ‘our lord’. I, too, could never understand why my father called that lord ‘our lord’ even though he lived far away from us – two miles away. Later I understood that he collected a tithe from my parents and that’s why my father, according to tradition, called him that. He must have had good reason to call him thus because for years the lord exploited the people of our farmstead, claiming rights to their pastures and forests. A forester had been assigned to guard the forests; he lived adjacent to our farmstead at the very edge of the forest in large, dilapidated quarters. The forester took pleasure in reporting on us to the lord, and my father, who lived closest, was often called upon to hear out the lord’s grumblings.
There’s one incident I will never forget…
One day the lord came to our farmstead to hunt; a large party of guests accompanied him and they took many deer, rabbits and birds. Their large bounty of game was laid out on the road near the forester’s cottage. Uninvited, we young parasites swarmed in from all sides, picking our noses and gaping at the game and the gentry. The gentlemen were seated in their carriages, preparing to travel home. My father, who’d been working his harrows near the pile of wood, was also on his way to have a look. As he walked over, he overheard the forester lodging a complaint to the lord about the villagers’ use of the pastures. Frightened, he hid behind the barn.
‘Get me one of the peasants!’ the lord bellowed from his carriage.
The forester told him that my father was nearby.
Hearing that he was the object of discussion and aware that there was no way for him to extricate himself, my father emerged from behind the barn. A hundred steps away he removed his hat and bowed deeply. Frightened and miserable, he rushed over to kiss the lord’s hand. The lord, with a voice not his own, began screeching at my father, threatening to send him and the entire village to beg in the street. With pale lips and a palpitating heart I witnessed this scene, noting the forester’s face beaming with satisfaction. Some of the guests watched with pity, and others with disdain. After he concluded his rant, and paying no heed to my father’s excuses, the lord whipped his horses and rattled off.
Father, hatless, stood for a few moments. Then he called me over. Agitated and trembling, he instructed: ‘Run over to the river to see whether it’s true that the shepherd is grazing his livestock on the lord’s lands.’
I rushed over with my friends and found the animals grazing ever so peacefully in their own fields, while the shepherds taunted the village dunce. I returned home and described everything to my father. Shaking his head he sat in silence.
But my mother, hearing that the shepherds were innocent, said accusingly: ‘Didn’t I tell you? Like master, like servant. Any reason to stab you in the back.’
‘Don’t be angry, mother. Our lord is a good man,’ father said, laughing softly and sadly as he often did.
‘Enough is enough,’ mother snapped. ‘Have you forgotten how he exploits the people? Have you forgotten the cane?’
I must admit that although she never said a bad word against the lords, my mother had no warm feelings for them. She often remembered the old days, telling us about events from the distant past, her voice sorrowful as she described the suffering of the serfs under their masters. As usual, father tried to apologise for the lords to mother, but he did this so timidly and then laughed so sadly that his voice betrayed resignation, not truth and conviction. But father’s apologies for the lords sometimes annoyed mother and that’s when she would remind him: ‘Enough already, father. Have you forgotten the cane?’
Father would not respond to this; he would only laugh sadly and, picking up the Book, he would read aloud to us about the life of Christ. For a long time I had no idea which cane mother was referring to and why father would always laugh so sadly whenever he defended the lords. But finally one day he took it upon himself to tell us the story.
Along with the forester, there was a man, one Dumbrauckas, who lived with him in the same quarters. He was a tall man, old, completely grey and alone, with no family. He had never been married but he was father to an adult son; that son lived somewhere deep in Russia and he visited his father infrequently. They said that once upon a time Dumbrauckas had been very wealthy but that he had lost all his wealth and property in a game of cards. How much of this was true, it’s hard to say. Only this is known: in my father’s memory he had become overseer under our lord.
After serfdom was abolished, Dumbrauckas lost his position and thus inexplicably came to live on our homestead with the forester. He lived there for many years, rarely venturing outside, spending all his time inside his room. He would either pace the room or sit at his little table at the window. As small children, seeing from a distance his grey head in the window, always in the same spot, we imagined some strange, incomprehensible and not necessarily benevolent creature, and we were afraid to get too close. Perhaps Dumbrauckas might have even died in that nest of his at the forester’s if it hadn’t been for unusual circumstances.
It must be said that our lord’s power and wealth were on the decline. The lovely forests surrounding our homestead had been bought up by Jews. The people had cut down the forest, transported the logs to the Sventoji and floated them down the river. All that remained were clearings littered with stray branches. On a hot summer’s day some fool from our village, while carting hay along the scarred lands, suddenly felt the urge to smoke. As he lit his pipe, the dry branches went up in flames. In an instant a fire was raging and the clearings were crackling… The entire homestead would have been destroyed if the villagers hadn’t banded together with pitchforks and rakes. After two hours all that lay alongside the homestead was a wide expanse of flat land, blackened and smelling of charred wood. The village later bought up this land from the lord for a trifle.
In this way, the lord’s power ended along with the forests. The village no longer needed to fear his threats. The forester was now expendable. Appropriately, the house he lived in collapsed. Water poured in through the roof, the winds whistled through the walls. And one fine day the forester disappeared without a trace. Dumbrauckas had to move somewhere as well. I don’t know if it was his idea or my parents’ suggestion, but Dumbrauckas moved into the living room of our house. He brought with him his little table, a few books, and his cow. Nothing else.
And as before, Dumbrauckas spent his time pacing the expanse of the living room, or sitting at his table by the window. He lived with us for two years and – in my opinion, very unexpectedly – became my teacher. He placed the largest Polish book possible into my hands, stood next to me and ordered me to read. He would stand there all day, and all day I would read. And so it went all summer and all winter long. I had great difficulty with the Polish language: I lisped and there were many words I could not pronounce. But my teacher was ruthless. He obliged me to exercise my tongue in all sorts of directions, to repeat the same word up to a hundred times – I would break out in a sweat and my eyes would flood with tears as a result. I would see Dumbrauckas’s fingers quivering – that’s how badly he wanted to box my ears or punch me in the nose. I got to know those hands quite well! They were the hands of an overseer – hard as steel. But when I heard he was leaving us – no one knew why – I became sad; I pitied him. That was in the autumn. An unfamiliar ‘gentleman’ arrived and drove him away.
As Dumbrauckas said his goodbyes, he left me his desk, and because my father was an old man, he left him his old applewood cane.
‘For you Joseph, I leave my cane as a keepsake,’ said Dumbrauckas to my father.
‘Thank you, sir,’ answered my father, visibly moved. ‘I wonder if we shall ever meet again?’
My father held the cane for a long time after Dumbrauckas left. As he turned it in his hands, he smiled sadly.
Then he raised his eyes and asked us unexpectedly:
‘Do you children know what this cane reminds me of?’
We all looked up.
‘It was long ago,’ my father began in an emotional voice. ‘Long, long ago. Your mother and I were still young, most of you were not yet here on this earth – only Michael had been born. We were afflicted by many great misfortunes that year. Bread was scarce and the fields and pastures were dry. And we worked not just for our own benefit, but also for the lord’s. We had to walk two miles to get to work – all the way to Burbiskis. I drove the oxen to Burbiskis one autumn to plough the fallow land. I couldn’t take much with me: I packed some bread and salt for myself and a few handfuls of old chaff for the oxen. We had nothing else. And I had to work for three days. As I was ploughing I ran out of feed for the oxen. I had no way to get more. There was nowhere for the oxen to graze – it was forbidden. My oxen were exhausted. They were barely dragging their feet. And one more day of ploughing remained! I stopped the oxen for lunch, sat down at the edge of the field and ate the dried bread and salt that I had pulled out of my basket. My oxen watched longingly as I ate. I felt so sorry for them that I had to stop eating. Nothing but crumbs remained in my basket. I fed them to the oxen and looked around: a few feet away I spied several piles of recently raked clover belonging to the lord.
‘And a terrible thought came into my head. Yes, as it might sometimes happen to you young people today. I work for the lord, so why can’t I feed the lord’s oxen some of his own grass?
‘I got up, went over to the pile and took a small handful of clover. I brought this over to the oxen and fed them by hand. The oxen happily devoured it. Watching them made me feel better. But then I suddenly felt someone strike my back, oh so painfully, with a hard object. I staggered and collapsed. My oxen jumped and almost ran off with the plough. Dazed, I raised my eyes: standing on top of me was Dumbrauckas with a cane in his hand. ‘‘You dog! Thief! Thief!’’ yelled Dumbrauckas, who walloped me in the back with his stick.
‘Seeing that I wasn’t moving, he helped me up from the ground with his arm, then he kicked me, knocking me down yet again. As I came around, I opened my eyes and saw my oxen standing nearby, their heads turned to watch me. Half-dead, I staggered home and lay in bed for three weeks.’
My father was silent. We sat in our places, stock-still. No one uttered a word. Only my sister, with tears in her eyes, asked: ‘Father, was this the same Dumbrauckas who lived at our house?’
‘The same one,’ answered father. ‘But you mustn’t be angry with him. During the uprisings the Cossacks beat him so badly that for three months he lay soaking in his own blood…’
‘Do you know, children, which cane he used to beat me?’ asked father, now smiling. ‘This one!’
We all shuddered, our eyes wide. Father raised his hand and showed us the cane, the one Dumbrauckas had left him as a keepsake.
My oldest brother approached father and grabbed the cane from his hands. He turned it again and again, as if considering something in his mind, then he threw it onto the lumber pile, saying with a barely audible voice. ‘Let’s burn it, father!’
‘No, no, children,’ answered father pleasantly. ‘Let this cane remain amongst you. When you look at it, remember that even your parents had once been punished. As you remember, don’t be angry that your mother and I sometimes hit you with a switch. We did it for your own good…. Perhaps our lord beat us for our own good?’
‘Enough, father, enough,’ mother ended the conversation. ‘It might be this very cane that caused your illness. This is not how we teach our children.’
Father smiled sadly, and taking up his book, he settled down to read.
As far as I know, my brothers still have the cane. It remains on the shelf in the granary. And nobody touches it.
April 25, 1906
First published in Jonas Biliunas, Lazda; Ubagas; Sveciai; Brisiaus galas, Vilnius: Lietuvos ukininkas (1906).
Translated by Jura Avizienis from Jonas Biliunas, Liudna pasaka: kurybos rinktine, Vilnius: Baltos lankos (1995).
Jonas Biliunas (1879–1907) was a prose writer, poet and publicist. Over his short life, he remained faithful to his left-wing worldview and explored working class life in his literary works. His creative legacy reveals a solidarity with the oppressed and their tragic fate. In his short stories and short novels he emphasises moral self-determination, guilt and feelings of responsibility.